As it would turn out, the Dogs would be no different to any of Hawthorn's last 10 victims at this ground.

The Dogs had a breaking point, and the Hawks found it more smoothly and efficiency than most.

It's because they are themselves smooth and efficient. Or at least they are on a normal day.

On this one, they were far from perfect. But who is, in the tricky wind and bitter cold of Launceston?

Thankfully for Clarkson and the club's hopes of securing top spot, they were as good as they needed to be in the first half, when they set up the match-winning lead they carried throughout.

From there, they seemed to slide somewhat in harmony with the falling temperature and fading light, before the floodgates opened up again as night broke.

The Dogs seemed to be in a hurry from the outset, no doubt realising the need to move the ball quickly so as not to let the likes of Grant Birchall (27 disposals), Matt Suckling (28 disposals) and Shaun Burgoyne (24 disposals) work back into the defence and then fly out.

The Dogs proved again they could match even the best in clearances and by three-quarter-time they had two more inside 50s.

But they simply lacked the polish and functionality that makes Hawthorn's method of scoring far superior to even better teams than the still-learning Dogs. Many of them are puppies, and someday will grow into dogs with tricks, but this was not their day.

This was a day that required imagination and creativity to slot the ball through the sticks. That is a strong suit of Hawthorn, and not the Dogs. And so the Dogs only managed six goals for the day, although it was not from lack of trying from players like Jake Stringer, who only kicked one but could have had five.

He is no Jack Gunston just yet, who may as well have been playing at Etihad Stadium for all the conditions affected his goal-kicking. He kicked three straight to foil Jarryd Roughead, who continued his climb up the Coleman Medal ladder, with a six-goal haul that proved the game's main source of interest.

Luke Dahlhaus also battled hard for the Dogs – when the team looked dangerous going forward he was central to the illusion, and Tom Liberatore (six clearances) and Ryan Griffen (eight clearances) were the ones getting it there.

The Dogs had the wind in the first quarter and kicked just two goals. The Hawks fed off their mistakes going forward and counter-punched with five. And from then on, you were just waiting for the Hawks to go into overdrive.

That came in the third quarter. They waited until the Dogs had used up all the petrol tickets with a spirited third-quarter challenge, but by the end of the term Brendan McCartney's team was further back than when it started.

Perhaps the game and where these two teams are at in the bigger picture can be summed up in the battle of the Rougheads – cousins Jarryd and Jordan.

You can see Jordan, like the Dogs, are going to be something some day. But Jarryd and the Hawks are something now, something pretty fierce, and the older cousin made sure his family members didn't forget it. He marked strongly and kicked truly, but also ran his young relative around and up and back until, finally, he had had enough in the last quarter.